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Tuesday, May 10, 2016

In Oklahoma Forcible Oral Sex Is Not Rape If The Victim Is Drunk

Here’s the story ….

There were allegations that a 17-year-old boy assaulted a 16-year-old girl after driving her home. The two had been drinking in a park with friends and the girl was very drunk; witnesses say she had to be carried to the boy’s car and another boy, who rode in the car for a short time, recalls that she was coming in and out of consciousness.

The 17-year-old boy, who was doing the driving, took the girl to her grandmother’s house where she was found unconscious. She was taken to a hospital, where a test put her blood alcohol content above .34 — more than four times the legal limit; she awoke as hospital staff were conducting a sexual assault examination.

Tests confirmed that the young man’s DNA was found on the back of her leg and around her mouth and the boy was arrested for sexual assault. He claims the girl — the drunk, semi-conscious girl he carried to his car — consented to performing oral sex, but the girl remembers nothing after leaving the park. The boy was charged with forcible oral sodomy.

It all seems pretty clear, though there is an element of he-said-she-said but this is where it gets a little WTF …

The trial judge dismissed the case but the girl appealed the decision, and on March 24th, an appeals court ruled that prosecutors could not apply the law to a victim who was incapacitated by alcohol:

“Forcible sodomy cannot occur where a victim is so intoxicated as to be completely unconscious at the time of the sexual act of oral copulation. We will not, in order to justify prosecution of a person for an offense, enlarge a statute beyond the fair meaning of its language.”

That’s right; the appeals court said that the girl was too drunk when the boy forced his penis into her mouth but that doesn’t mean it was forcible sodomy.

Benjamin Fu, the Tulsa County district attorney says the decision is stunningly bad:

“The plain meaning of forcible oral sodomy, of using force, includes taking advantage of a victim who was too intoxicated to consent. I don’t believe that anybody, until that day, believed that the state of the law was that this kind of conduct was ambiguous, much less legal. And I don’t think the law was a loophole until the court decided it was.”

Yup, since the victim was too drunk to say ‘No,’ it’s her fault.

The boy’s attorney, Shannon McMurray, says prosecutors were clearly wrong to charge the young man with forcible sodomy, and not a lesser crime of unwanted touching … by putting his dick into the mouth of an unconscious girl:

“There was absolutely no evidence of force or him doing anything to make this girl give him oral sex, other than she was too intoxicated to consent.”

Um, let’s focus on that last statement by the boy’s attorney, a woman: She was TOO intoxicated to consent.

Now, Oklahoma does have a rape statute that protects victims who were too intoxicated to consent to vaginal or anal intercourse, but if you’re drunk, too drunk to consent or not consent, and a guy slips a dick in your mouthy in Oklahoma, it’s your fault.

Over here if you can't give consent for whatever reason; that's it, it's a crime...rape, sexual assault or whatever is appropriate. Although we have a terrible rape prosecution record; of up to 95k victims per annum just over 1k has a successful prosecution, absolutely appalling atatistics